Beach BBQ in Bentonville - Brississippi Unique.

In the process of researching The Arkansas Barbecue Traveler, I wandered all over the state. I spent weeks in different sections, different counties, stopping in and trying barbecue and doing my best to interview every pitmaster I met.

But I was never able to get an answer when I called and emailed Beach BBQ. The place was too busy. I’d call, get a girl on the line who was too busy to take down my number, and get frustrated. Facebook messages went unread. Frustration mounted. I had allotted a full week to just Benton County restaurants and, though I’d been able to stop in at almost every one of them, this is the one that confounded me.

So one day, inbetwixt a meeting with Rob Nelson about Brothers Meethouse (which was still several months from completion at the time) and a stop-in at Smokin’ Joes, I pulled in to the only spot outside Beach BBQ and went in.

I barely made it in the door. There was a line all the way back.

This wasn’t going to be my day for getting an interview. But I was still going to try my best.

When you walk in, you have a sprawling dining room to the right and the line to the counter on the right. That line serpentined back around a corner and around an empty eight foot table. Once I did get around the first curve in the line, I noticed a menu scrawled across several sections of blackboard. Another fold in the line away was the glassed-in meat counter, where customers could tell Chef what they wanted that day.

I heard the word “Brississippi” even before I read it on the wall. At first, I was sure I heard it wrong. But those words popped up again. And again.

When I did spot it, it was over this guy’s head under sandwiches - “Brisket/Brississippi.” Under that (once he moved), I saw the rest of the list and got excited - chopped brisket, pulled or chopped pork, turkey, portobello mushrooms (!)... and then to the left, a full board of delights. MAAAAAN. We had, top to bottom, brisket, chopped brisket, beef ribs (sadly, out that day), pulled or chopped pork, pork belly, turkey, hot link, spare ribs, smoked wings, chicken breast, brown sugar and rosemary pork burnt ends (!), brisket burnt ends, brisket carnitas (also out the day), and rib tips. Literally something for every meat lover.

When I finally made it to the menu board, I could see the rest, including the description of Brississippi. “Texas brisket made with a Delta twist,” it said. Harrumph, I thought. We’re in northwest Arkansas and neither of those things were… er… okay, but this dish is served here. I was willing to give up trying portabello mushroom (smoked with thyme and garlic!) barbecue sandwiches and beef burnt ends just to give this a try.

The board also featured barbecue nachos, stuffed baked potatoes, a smoked salmon dip, and blueberry cobbler. And that wasn’t all - there were sides listed (mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, kimchi coleslaw, baked beans, baked potato salad, mustard dill potato salad, collard greens, and street corn). The menu was so packed, plates and combinations were listed overhead on another blackboard above the kitchen.

I listened as the line moved. Chef chatted with a customer who was asking him where the name came from. “A friend named it… beach sounded a lot better…” wafted over as the distance between me and that counter shortened.

The line moved fast. There might have been twenty people ahead of me, but within ten minutes I was standing next in line, listening and watching. The guy ahead of me in line was asking half a dozen questions - the most pertinent being “what’s good here?”

“Anything up there… you could get the nachos,” Chef told the guy, as he deftly sliced into a smoked chicken breast. His knife skills were swift and accurate. “I got poppers today, too. I make poppers out of the ribs, where I take the meat off the ribs and put it on the top, and, see, what we do…”

“Are you the pie lady,” the woman behind me asked. I turned for a bit of conversation with her, and not 30 seconds later I’m up.

“What’ll you have? I have pork belly coming up.”

“I’m more interested in your brisket,” I told him. “If you don't mind, I want to take a picture of that because that looks amazing,” indicating his board, where his hands were maneuvering a brisket end as I asked, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Yeah, sure! Plate? Sandwich?”

“Is the brisket and Brississippi two separate things, or is that the style of your brisket sandwich?”

He laughed as he sliced right from the point of the brisket. “It’s something I came up with. It’s a little oak smoked Texas style brisket with a little sauce and Mississippi pot roast seasoning. It’s very south Mississippi.”

“Oak and not pecan?”

He stopped cutting just a minute and gestured a little with his knife hand. “Yeah, oak here, that’s what I like to smoke with. You know something about barbecue?”

“Some. I’m learning,” I told him. “I’m writing a book on barbecue in Arkansas. I’ve been trying to reach your folks for like, gosh, weeks.”

“Yeah, we have been jamming. It’s so busy. We should talk. But -” he gestured at the line behind me, “so you want the Brississippi.”

“Yes sir. I gotta try that.”

He quickly shredded the brisket he’d just cut with his finger, then smacked it with a handful of seasoning and shot it with a thin sauce. The pile quickly went one hand to another and atop a buttered, toasted seedless bun bottom. “Get back with me. I think we have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“Would you like anything with it?” the girl at the register asked. The beef-topped bun bottom had already been scooted across to her.

A little discombobulated and still somewhat fixated on chef’s handwork, I asked “side? I mean, I’m here to try the barbecue.”

“The free stuff - do you want slaw? Or kimchi slaw”

That got my attention. “On the sandwich?”

“If you want.”

“Chef,” I asked, “how do you feel about coleslaw on the sandwich.”

“People do that around here. I go with pickles. It goes with the brisket.”

Before I could launch into my standard statement about Arkansas and coleslaw on the sandwich, the customer behind me started asking questions, and I needed to get my ass out of the way. “Kimchi slaw,” I said,”and I guess I’m going with the pickles, too.”

“Your first time?” she asked. I nodded. She quickly handed me a small cup of the kimchi slaw. “You should try it first.”

I tipped it back like a shot into my mouth. It was pungent, sharp, but also kinda smooth, with just the right fermentation note. Lovely.

“Yeah, that’s it,” I told her. “I’m sold!” I hollered at chef, holding up the empty cup. He grinned and kept working while the girl at the register loaded up the tray, I slid my card through, and took my tray over to a table at the other end of the dining room. I had another shoot right up against this one and I had to move quick.

Beach BBQ has five sauces on the table - classic, spicy, sweet, vinegar, and Carolina. I quickly identified that it was the vinegar sauce that chef had squeezed onto my beef.

I opened the kimchi slaw and dotted the lid with a tiny bit of each sauce, to figure out which I liked. The classic is a cumin-honey-brown sugar sort of sauce, something I have joked as “Alton Brown meatloaf sauce,” a hint of what could be Worcestershire sauce, and maybe ketchup. Sweeter and thicker. The spicy? Mustard-based, not all that spicy to me but I like a little heat. Sweet? Thin, tastes like there’s some molasses in there with the vinegar, paprika, sugar, smoke flavor. The vinegar? Just vinegar and, what, paprika? Simple. And the Carolina, a strong, mustardy, savory sauce… not my usual, but wow, it was good.

Just smelling all these sauces and the meat and such, I knew the kimchi slaw was definitely a side for me. It was tasty, sure, but the background sourness to it wasn’t for piling on the beef.

Which - I can honestly say, no one else serving brisket in Arkansas is even coming close to this creation. It has those pot roast notes to it - onion powder, a little bouillon flavor, garlic, touch of Ranch, a classic pork seasoning mix. When hit with just that touch of vinegar sauce, it created this yin yang of flavor, a little sharper than I’m used to with brisket, but also the sort of flavor I’d more expect on a meat-and-three roast plate at a diner.

It was good. It was all right with the pickle. It was better with just the lightest touch of the classic sauce on it - somehow bringing the tone of the flavor back inline with the sandwich. It didn’t need the sauce, but the sauce sure enhanced things.

Now, the chef at the counter, probably was John Beachboard. I’m guessing from photos, because we never exchanged names, and I never could get an answer back before The Arkansas Barbecue Traveler went to print.

I’ve been meaning to get back, but *looks around* life has happened, hard, on my side of the equation. I need to, though.

If you’d like to get over there yourself, you’ll find Beach BBQ at 1080 SE 14th Street, half a block west of J Street. Call in at (479) 544-1060 or head to TheBeachBBQ.com to place an order.